We’ve just wrapped up our second annual Poetry Awards Contest, and we’re so excited to finally announce the winner for 2022!

Why We Started This Poetry Awards Contest

We decided to host the poetry awards contest as a way to support and empower poetry writers everywhere, regardless of their experience or background. When I won my first poetry awards contest at age 13, it forever changed the course of my life, and I hope that this contest can inspire and support other writers to pursue their dreams regardless of your age, background, or nationality.

You don’t need a creative writing degree or a Pulitzer Prize under your belt to be a poet. Anyone can pick up a pen (or grab their smartphone) and create poetry. That’s why we set out to make this contest as accessible as possible by making it international and maintaining a very low entry fee.

The result this year was a remarkably talented pool of writers and outstanding poems to choose from. While it was challenging to choose just one winner, we couldn’t be happier with the excellent submissions we received.

2022 Poetry Awards Grand Prize Winner

We’re pleased to announce that the Grand Prize winner of the 2022 TCK Publishing Poetry Awards is…

Adolaigh

and below is their winning poem:

Choose to Live

Screens, screens, screens…

Do you let the blue light in?

Do you let it grow like the blue rose it has become?

I see rays of artificial suns throughout my day, 

With blue light in actuality above me all the while,

And it seems more deadly.

My senses feel atrophied.

I do not see the rays of god softly scratching the backs

Of the workers this country is built on,

No.

I do not see the rains to which the Natives

Humbly call in order to remain 

Peacefully among the animals 

That love the land far greater than I,

No.

I do not see the Earth, calmly continuing it’s rhythms

While we destroy what we have so naively

Decided belongs to us,

No.

I see pixels.

I see facsimiles.

I see repugnant manifestations of those I so dearly love

And cherish, that I am being forced to pretend

Are real.

I do not hear the orchestra of aviators calling out to us,

So persistently as they do, for change,

No.

I do not hear the whispers of my ancestors through the 

Limbs of Mother Earth’s forever and endlessly

Reaching love,

No.

I do not hear the odious opus of the clouds as they

Thunder their tympanies across their own, 

Unpatrolled highways,

No.

I hear static.

I hear broken voices.

I hear every other word of fellow spirits being torn to shreds

Always seconds later with no hope of offering 

My own steady stream of healing sound.

I do not feel the dust and grit, millions of years old, 

Crunching under my own fruitless step,

No.

I do not feel the warmth of far off fire gently wrapping around

My tingling skin as I give myself, every part of me,  

To Her mercy,

No.

I do not feel the magnetism radiating into the deepest

Caverns of my being as I place my hand on the mountain,

And feel time, not linearly, but completely for a moment,

No.

I feel concrete.

I feel steel.

I feel the cold sting of every unnatural surface we have so wrongly 

Placed below and above our unwavering fear of all that is

Natural.

I do not smell the misery that tells me I am on the right path to my 

Home among the pines,

No.

I do not smell the waves of the Pacific sitting atop a world that calls

To me, a world that I will never have the pleasure of knowing

As I do this one,

No.

I do not smell each and every thorned rose that tells me,

“You may relish in my scent for as long as I have it, 

But do not think for a moment you may pluck me away from my family

Here”, 

No.

I smell tar. 

I smell insatiable burning desires.

I smell the fleeting phantom pheromones of those I have spent

Years in boxes with, learning and deciphering, only to have

Forgotten so quickly what safety is simply through 

The air around me.

I do not taste the sweetness of accomplishment from the fruits

That, for so long, I have laboured so hard for,

No.

I do not taste the bitterness of loss from the fruits that Fate

Does not wish me to reach until some later time,

Or never,

No.

I do not taste the happiness that is harvested from sitting next to

The one I love most while they taste their own

Flavors of life,

No.

I taste electricity.

I taste stolen power.

I taste the process through which we have now put

Everything that enters our own monasteries,

Whether we know it, or no.

And yet, 

Follow along with me,

When you close your eyes,

Clench your fists, 

Breathe in all that is this glorious rock:

The rays, the rains, and the rhythms,

The pixels, facsimiles, and manifestations,

Aviators, ancestors, and clouds,

Static, voices, and spirits, 

Dust, warmth, magnetism,

Concrete, steel, and surfaces, 

Pines, waves, and roses,

Tar, desires, and pheromones,

Sweetness, bitterness, happiness,

Electricity, power, processes —

Filling your lungs with what has, what is, and what will,

A serenity like never before will circulate through your totality,

As you exhale peace,

Open your eyes,

And choose to live. 

Honorable Mentions

We had so many amazing submissions. Below, we’re proud to announce the Honorable Mentions in this year’s poetry contest.

Pruned

By Bianca Ryckert

When you’re a child,
You step out of the warm bath that someone else made for you.
With your fingers pruned up,
Your toys lining the edge of the porcelain,
And your pajamas lied out on the bed for you.
You step into the arms of your mother with a towel outstretched,
Waiting to wrap you up.
The short side of the towel is taller than me,
And it wraps around me two times,
As the water drains from the tub.
My hair is brushed,
My forehead kissed.
I am tucked into bed,
And reminded to sleep tight.
When you get older,
The water doesn’t stay as warm as you’d like it to.
You can’t stop thinking about your unchecked to-do-list:
The house that needs cleaning,
The meals that need cooked,
The laundry that needs to be folded.
When you step out into the cold air,
Nobody is there to wrap you up.
The towel doesn’t go below my knees and I stand there,
Shivering.
I sit on the bathmat with my knees to my chest,
So the towel can (almost) wrap around me once more.
Putting on my wrinkled t-shirt I took from the dryer,
It’s been sitting there for quite a while,
I will tuck myself into bed,
And remind myself that I should call my mom tomorrow.

The Vacuum

By Andie Italia

I don’t slit my wrists. I write poetry instead. I bleed
From an inkwell when the pain wraps around my head

And suffocates my being with tears, filling
Up the space in my nose, my mouth, my ears.

It is in this ceremony that I find my relief from a
Tired, worn-out system full of pencil marks and grief,

Full of empty promises, a useless vacuum space. It is
Even in the nothingness that I am feeling out of place.

5:25am and now I am feeling overwhelmed, so I
Muster up my strength for half of a story left to tell.

“Healing doesn’t mean a reversion to past identities. Who
I was before and I who I am do not make up who I will be.

Sure, we learn from our mistakes, and from other peoples’, too, but
It all starts to get strange when you learn that nothing’s really new.

So, onward let us march in our dreary single-file life, and
Keep pretending we know what it means to truly be alive.”

Memories

By Aiste Radvilaviciute

As the days go by,

I collect all my memories inside.

I put them in tiny drawers

And hide them in the corner of my mind.

Just to keep them safe from bad influence,

Desperate hours and nightmares at dark.

But when the moment comes,

When I feel I can’t go on anymore,

When my motivation is gone

And I can’t let it go,

I open one drawer,

The tiniest one at first,

I pick up one nice memory,

Something to warm up my frozen heart.

And it starts to get better,

Step by step.

I can tell my soul’s healing

I can finally take a deep breath.

There are many of these drawers

And they all have their own story.

From the hectic rush hours

To the trip through the valleys.

Some of them are rusted,

Covered in dust and forgotten,

Longing there to be erased,

But show up least expected.

While the others are fresh, bubbly, sweet like a candy,

They leave a sugary taste,

But melt away when the winter ends.

I collect all my memories like the stars in the sky,

Sometimes I can see all of them clearly there,

When they’re not shadowed by the dark clouds.

I pick my memories up like autumn leaves on the ground –

Yellow one, green one, and the red one is there.

I put them between book’s sheets

To rest and to dry.

The book of my life

That has the beginning and the end.

But when I take them away from the book’s sheets,

They’re coming to life

Because hidden for decades

They are dying inside.

It’s perfectly fine that one day they will leave me.

They’ll start to fade away when my summer turns to winter.

Memories written in diary or posted on social media

Might survive a bit longer

Only if someone reads them.

Tree of Knowledge

By Faith Guttman

Do you ever wonder how it tasted?

Sometimes I think of Eve’s great bite

And dream of a bitter taste.

I hope that the tartness overwhelmed her,

And wonder at what point she realized

That she had set mankind on a new path—

And not necessarily a good one—

Towards a new dawn, a new day, a new life.

With great power comes great responsibility,

And is not Knowledge the greatest power of all?

We mortals do not know how to wield power properly,

And it is this Great Irony that makes me wish it was bitter.

Sometimes, however, I hope it was sweet.

I hope it was sweet because I think I would prefer

A timeline begun in a state of ignorant bliss

To a timeline begun in eye-opening fear and regret.

At the Music Center

By Hannah Lee

You walk down the stairs and
laugh, talking in oranges, joking
in scarlets, mingling perfectly
with the modern room and with
the air around you. I watched
but couldn’t hear, but saw
your canary walk, your green
youth, the fair happy people with
you. Then my mind unrolled you,
and you slipped perfectly out,
escaped without even knowing
from the willowy tentacles. It
became true that your smile was
too jaunty, that your confidence
was velveteen; your friendship
was a tint I could never mix. So
then you were free from me. And
what if we are prisoners in the
minds of a hundred others? Was I
ever captive in someone else’s? Yes;
I fled when I found out. So I let you
flee from me, or simply slip out,
walk away that bright saffron walk,
yellow, to mauve, to absent blue.

Watching Reruns

By A.J. Baumel

Memory Glands

By Caleb Greenwell

Remembrance

By Sophia Elizabeth Dattilo

Again and Again

By Neal Hall

What’s Next

The 2023 TCK Publishing Poetry Awards Contest is now open for submissions.

Other Writing Contests

The annual Readers Choice Awards contest where readers vote for their favorite book is open for submissions (and submissions are free).

Our annual Short Story Contest is open for submissions with a $1,000 prize.

Our annual Flash Fiction Writing Contest is open for submissions with a $1,000 prize.

Our annual Nonfiction Writing Contest is also open for submissions with a $1,000 prize.

 

If you’re interested in more posts about writing contests, then you might also like:

• What to Do After Winning a Writing Contest: 5 Ways to Celebrate Your Win
• How to Enter a Writing Contest: 8 Tips for Success
• 2021 TCK Publishing Poetry Awards Contest
• List of Short Story Contests (Updated for 2021)